2012-01-28

It's about that time to get the 25 Man Roster Challenge up and running again! This will be our 3rd annual competition and we have yet to have a clear winner decided. This is due in part to not having a kick ass tie breaker. That will hopefully change this time around.

The rules for the challenge are simple. All you are required to do is pick the 25 names that you think will be on the 2012 Opening Day Roster for your Toronto Blue Jays by midnight the day before the start of full camp workouts, which is February 24th. (So the deadline is actually Feb. 23 at 11:59) That's it. You can provide as much or as little explanation as you see fit. And you'll need to pick a tie breaker in the event there is one. More on that in a moment.

This years challenge will no doubt be a very competitive one if you choose to enter a ballot. This is a credit to the strength of the Blue Jays roster, meaning there is much fewer jobs up for grabs unlike previous seasons. We have a feeling that the winner will need to nail all 25 names AND the tie breaker which will be the teams Spring Training won loss record.

That's right, you heard us correct. The unmeaning-full silly season will now have some significance. From what we can tell, your Toronto Blue Jays will attempt to play 33 games this spring. That includes all the split squad games with the exception of the one against Team Canada on March 13th. Now as you all know some of these games might be rained out and won't be made up. It is also possible but not exactly probable that some of these games will end in a tie.

For your reference, here is the record of the last six spring campaigns:

2011 16-14

2010 12-13

2009 13-17

2008 13-16

2007 12-14

2006 12-18

It is our hope that a single winner will be crowned this time around based on this gong show of a tie breaker. Please note that if you do not select a tie breaker, we will not be hounding you to do so. In the event of a tie and you did not choose to include a tie breaker with your ballot, you will lose.

The prize will once again be the coveted limited edition Randy Knorr autographed 8x10 photo. Behold in all it's glory!

(Frame not included)

We do reserve the right to add additional prizes as we see fit. This will most likely depend on the number of entrants for this years challenge. We have a bunch of old school baseball cards just burning a hole in our pockets.....just saying.

A few things to consider while compiling your ballot:

It doesn't matter who plays where, only if they make the Opening Day roster.

Do we roll with a 4 man rotation to start the year? Maybe an 8 man bullpen? Or perhaps a short bench?

What do we do with the guys that are out of options? All of them would all have to be on the Opening Day roster or
potentially be lost on waivers. Unless of course they start the year on
the DL with an "injury".

The X factor this year appears to be Carlos Villaneuva. He is a valid candidate for both the rotation and the bullpen.

Who wins the LF battle between Travis Snider and Eric Thames? General Manager Silent Assassin Alex Anthopoulos has already gone on record as saying Thames has the inside track for the job. That was before he gained 20 pounds of pure muscle and worked out with a pitching coach to improve his throwing arm this off-season.

How about the utility infielder gig on the bench? As many as three players have a legit claim on the job. Could be an interesting little battle to watch develop. Maybe the decision is made to go with two of these players and Ben Fransisco gets bumped down to Vegas.

If after the deadline to submit your ballot a trade or signing happens there is nothing that can be done to change it. If this is the case - it has happened in the past - then we are all wrong together. Unless you somehow find a way to predict it.

If you want to play you have a 3 options on how to get your ballot in:

1: Send us an email: 1bluejaysway@gmail.com

2: Make a post on your blog, if you have one and send us a link

3: Add your ballot to the comments section of this post or the reminder post we'll do before the deadline

In the interests of full disclosure, we have included a complete list of most the players that are under contract for the 2012 season. Just for fun, we attempted to predict what level we think they will begin the year at. Consider it a guideline. The rosters are shown in age from oldest to youngest with left handed pitchers going first. It took a while to complete and we are positive you will disagree with some of the placements but we really don't want to hear it at this point. Short season teams were not included for our own sanity. If you truly think ours is that bad then you should check out this joke.

Notes:

Players on the 40-man roster are indicated in BOLD.

# indicates player out of options. We don't know and have no real way of finding out if Oliver, Frasor or Cordero have any options left and we really don't think it matters much at this point. All of them have jobs on Opening Day in our eyes.

$ indicates rule 5 draft eligible. There could be more - Jon Diaz for example - but again this is only the players we've been able to confirm were Rule 5 eligible this winter.

* indicates left-handed batter

** indicates switch-hitter

% indicates non-roster invite to spring training

We used data from Baseball Reference for the league specific Minor League average ages and from FanGraphs for the elite and "old" ages noted below.

This team will be stacked with position player prospects and will be an interesting one to follow. We have to wonder if loading up this team for a deep run in the playoffs is because the contract with the 51's is up at the end of this season. If this team does well, it will be a lot easier to get a coveted spot with a AAA affiliate in the International League.

Something just has to give here. It's great to have depth and all but once you factor in the guys who don't make the Opening Day 25 man roster, this pitching staff will be bursting at the seems. We guess some of them will be cut, some of them will be injured or some of them will be traded. We are thinking besides the guys protected by the 40 man roster that Hoey, Carpenter and Chavez will be tough to part with. Figueroa is a nice story.

WILDCARDS

1B Gabe Jacobo 1987-04-14

RHP Javier Avendano 1990-11-06
C Hector Alvarez 1991-02-14

AAA portion of the Rule 5 guys. Each pick cost the club $12,000 and the players can't be demoted below
Triple-A without first being offered back to their original team.

All of these arms in the bullpen with the exception of maybe Loup could/should be pitching in
AAA but since it's such a clusterfuck up there with respect to sheer
numbers, we have them slated to pitch here. Ditto for Mr Wildcard.

WILDCARD

RHP Vince Bongiovanni 1983-01-11

Dunedin Blue Jays (HiA)

Florida State League average age in 2011: Hitters 22.7 Pitchers 22.9
Elite level prospects age: 20
"Old" for the level: 24

Both of these players were college picks from the 2011 Rule 4 draft. In keeping with the previous years philosophy (McGuire/Wojciechowski) we think they have a good chance to begin their pro careers at this level.

Lansing Lugnuts (LoA)

Midwest League average age in 2011: Hitters 21.6 Pitchers 21.8
Elite level prospects age: 19
"Old" for the level: 23

RHP Alan Farina 1986-08-09
Tommy
John July 2011
In the last week of March look for this guy to get
placed on the 60 day DL thereby opening up a spot on the 40 man roster. (cough Vizquel or Laffey cough)

RHP Stephen Marek 1983-09-03
Tommy John May 2011
Recently signed to an Minor League contract, when he's able physically to pitch he should be in Vegas.

LHP John Anderson 1988-11-09
Tommy John July 2011
Check out the video of the exact moment in time when his elbow ligaments actually snap right here. Spoiler alert: it's not pretty

RHP Sam Dyson 1988-05-07
Tommy John Nov 2010
He should be just about ready to rock. Not sure if
the team views him as a starter or a reliever at this point nor are we sure what level
he would start at. If we had to guess, we'd say Dunedin.

3B Mark Sobolewski 1986-12-24
Skin Cancer Jan 2012
What was thought to be simply a mole or a pimple turned out to be melanoma. Get caught up to speed here. It's unknown whether he is able to get it going in a month or not but if he can play, he starts in New Hampshire.

2012-01-19

Back in October, we reported on a thumb injury that top Blue Jays prospect Travis d'Arnaud suffered while competing with Team USA. The reigning Eastern League Most Valuable Player felt a pop after "catching a ball wrong". The 22-year-old was soon diagnosed with a ligament tear in his thumb.

d'Arnaud, who was acquired from the Phillies in 2009 as part of the Roy Halladay trade, required surgery and has been rehabbing the repaired hand ever since, to get ready for the upcoming season.

According to the All-Star catcher he'll be ready for spring training and doesn't expect to miss a beat in 2012.

"My hand feels great," d'Arnaud said. "Rehab went well. I went to (the Sports Medicine Institute) in Anaheim, California and went for about two months of rehab. My thumb feels normal. Now, I just need to get accustomed to catching bullpens and such."

En route to helping the Double A New Hampshire Fisher Cats lock down the EL championship, in 2011, d'Arnaud posted a .311 batting average with 33 doubles, 21 homeruns, 78 RBI and a league leading .542 slugging percentage.

The southern California native is already focused beyond recovery, as he's looking forward to having another big offensive year with hopes of more championship hardware.

2012-01-06

On a regular basis, we here at 1BlueJaysWay bring our readers exclusive interviews/features with various minor league players and organizational personnel. We've browsed through our Q&A's from the last season to bring you the ten best 1BJW interview quotes of the year.

Check out the teasers below and click each link to take in the full interview that we brought your way over the past year.

Blue Jays outfielder Colby Rasmus talking about his transition, after joining Toronto via a mid-season trade: "It's been good. All the guys on the team are awesome. I like the staff...all the coaches are great. Just all the way around, it's definitely a different environment than St. Louis. You know, St. Louis is a little uptight, but (Toronto is) a little more fun. I have more fun going to the field everyday."

Highly ranked catching prospect Travis d'Arnaud discussing the depth at catcher in the Blue Jays' organization: "The (catching) in the Blue Jays organization is unbelievable...the best catching organization I've been in. Shoot, you look at every level and we've got top prospects. At Triple A they've got Jeroloman, here (at Double-A) we've got me and Yan (Gomes), at High A you've Jimenez, in Low A you've got Perez. Even in the GCL you've got Nessy. I mean, it's just unreal how good of catching prospects the Blue Jays have."

Pitching prospect Deck McGuire chatting about alumni of his college, Georgia Tech, helping to prepare him for his professional career: "Mark Teixeira always came back every year for a football game and he'd come in the locker room and we could just ask him questions. And a lot of the questions, even though he's a hitter and I'm a pitcher, it was just, 'What can you learn from a guy that does it for 162 games a year at the highest level?' And then there are guys like Matt Weiters, who handles a pitching staff as well as anybody in the big leagues at a young age. And he's a guy that's always accessible and you can ask him questions. And there are just a tons of guys, big leaguers, guys that have that time that are at the highest point in our profession that you can always come to with any kind of questions to help yourself get better."

Former 1st round draft pick Chad Jenkins talking about his impressions of New Hampshire as his home for the 2011 season: "It's awesome. I've never been in a place where the fans love the team so much. We have a great fan base up there. They show up, sunshine, rain, no matter what, they're there and they're cheering us on."

Outfield prospect and two-time minor league stolen base champion Anthony Gose answering a fan question about the improvements he made to reduce his caught stealing numbers: "(I just tried to) be smarter. Last year I came in real big-headed and cocky after the year I had before in Lakewood. Last year humbled me and basically just being smarter. I had it the whole time and I should have known this last year and not went through that trial and error process, but you know, I'll take the good with the bad and here I am and I'll just keep moving forward."

Jays minor league coach Danny Solano translating for top SS prospect Adeiny Hechavarria, as he discusses the opportunity to learn from rehabbing big leaguers like Rajai Davis, when they spend time in the minors: "He said he tries to learn from as far as what those guys are doing, and how they're disciplined, how those guys swing, how those guys act outside of the lines like in the clubhouse, how those guys have a routine every day. So he tries to see all those little things."

Double-A Fisher Cats manager Sal Fasano talking about first baseman Mike McDade: "He's probably been our most consistent hitter. He just keeps improving daily. It's fun to see him get a little bit of notoriety, because he's kind of worked his way into prospecthood. He wasn't a highly touted guy, but he keeps producing every year."

Mid-Season All-StarMarcus Knecht on where he grew up: "Right in the city about 10 minutes north of downtown, north of the Rogers Centre."

On a rehab assignment Jesse Litsch explains how he got the dream job of every little kid, that being a Big League bat boy: "One thing they gave me credentials to be in the clubhouse so they were always looking for me and they found me in the clubhouse so that's why they initially gave me the bat boy job."

All world catching prospect Carlos Perez gives us his thoughts on the weather in Lansing early in the season: "Yeah, here is too cold."